The next US pres­i­dent and be­yond

Watch closely theUS ‘new nor­mal’ Vi­tal role to play in glob­al­iza­tion

Ed­i­tor’s note: The Amer­i­can Cham­ber of Com­merce in China held a sem­i­nar on “The Next US Pres­i­dent and Be­yond” in Bei­jing onWed­nes­day. The fol­low­ing are ex­cerpts from the speeches of four par­tic­i­pants:

TJames Zim­mer­man, chair­man of the Amer­i­can Cham­ber of Com­merce in China his US pres­i­den­tial elec­tion has been about the rise of un­con­ven­tional can­di­dates. And it is not only in the United States but also over is­sues such as Brexit that un­con­ven­tional can­di­dates are rising in many coun­tries. This should make us re­al­ize that peo­ple have anx­i­eties about their fu­ture. This is a global trend, and no coun­try can be im­mune to it. So China has to pay spe­cial at­ten­tion to the un­der­ly­ing anx­i­ety among peo­ple in the US.

The US and China are the largest and sec­ond-largest economies in the world, and they need to work to­gether. The two economies are highly in­te­grated and in­ter­de­pen­dent. There­fore, the ques­tions be­ing raised on glob­al­iza­tion are a cause for con­cern for their lead­er­ships, es­pe­cially be­cause the Sino-US re­la­tion­ship has to be con­struc­tive and pos­i­tive. mar­kets, as well asUS busi­nesses that rely on com­modi­ties or prod­ucts made over­seas.

Other coun­tries could re­tal­i­ate in ways that are dam­ag­ing toUS in­ter­ests. This kind of rhetoric might make vot­ers feel bet­ter dur­ing the cam­paign butmy own viewis that such an ap­proach will not work in prac­ti­cal terms. Im­pos­ing such a large tar­iff could ac­tu­ally hurt Amer­i­cans as much (if not more) as China and would in that sense likely be a case of cut­ting our nose off to spite our face.

I do ex­pect a tougher pos­ture by the in­com­ing Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion on is­sues re­lated to in­ter­na­tional trade and com­merce, in­clud­ing a ma­jor push for re­ciproc­ity in bi­lat­eral eco­nomic re­la­tions. But only time will tell how specif­i­cally this will be im­ple­mented. Ran­dal Phillips, vice-chair­man of Amer­i­can Cham­ber of Com­merce in China strat­egy, the US seems to of­fer China a num­ber of things that it could face it­self later. If Trump im­poses 45 per­cent tar­iff on Chi­nese im­ports, as he said dur­ing the pres­i­den­tial cam­paign, the US could face sim­i­lar tar­iff on its ex­ports to China, lead­ing to a de­struc­tive trade and in­vest­ment en­vi­ron­ment. This “new nor­mal” should be watched more closely.

When it comes to the en­vi­ron­ment, we want the two coun­tries to be­come greener. They should also be­come wealth­ier and stronger by fol­low­ing the global rules we all ac­cept. They have not yet done that, but we hope they will.

AXu Yang, chair of the Chi­nese Gov­ern­ment Af­fairs Com­mit­tee, Amer­i­can Cham­ber of Com­merce in China lot of sta­bi­liz­ers ex­ist in the China-US re­la­tion­ship. As the newlead­er­ship takes of­fice in the WhiteHouse, it will hope­fully es­tab­lish a newmech­a­nism for the two ma­jor pow­ers to in­ter­act and co­op­er­ate. And China’s out­bound in­vestors will surely help forge that mech­a­nism by dis­cussing mar­ket ac­cess with theirUS coun­ter­parts.

Trade pro­tec­tion­ism is not a new is­sue; the trend is re­turn­ing in many coun­tries across the world. The G20 lead­ers and trade min­is­ters promised at the Hangzhou sum­mit in Septem­ber to make glob­al­iza­tion more in­clu­sive so that small and medium-sized en­ter­prises and many peo­ple left be­hind by glob­al­iza­tion can par­tic­i­pate in it and en­joy its ben­e­fits. The in­com­ing Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion in the US will have a very big role to play to make that hap­pen.